About

This project, sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust seeks to unpack the wider significance of the hortus conclusus or walled garden within medieval culture and the multiple uses to which it was put theologically, physically, medically, figuratively and in literary terms; examine the historical and material space of the garden and its functions; and trace the striking correlation between many of the myriad plants and spices in the biblical Song of Songs, those described in treatises on the garden, and those in medical texts as cures for female disorders.

Image: The Lover and Dame Idleness outside the Walled Garden (BL, MS Harley 4425, f.12v). By kind permission of the British Library.